I watched the Firm twice, or maybe three times, and I can’t for the life of me figure out the ending. As I see it, the Firm may be overcharging the gangsters, and Tom Cruise points this out to the fat gangster guy with the bad complexion. Apparently, the gang is just tickled pink to go into court with this, as long as they get immunity for who-knows-what out of the deal.
First question, did I understand the thing correctly?
Second question, if the answer to Q 1 is Yes, then, IS THE STUDIO THAT LET THIS CRAP OUT ON DRUGS OR SOMETHING!!!
Because, asI understand it, the gang is going to roll over on the lawyers that keep them out of jail and help them get rich just because some dork new-hire isn’t happy with his employers.
Thank you,
hh
The Feds are going after Bendini, Lambert & Locke (The Firm) because they believe (correctly) that they are laundering money for the Morolto crime family. What they want is for McDeere (Cruise) to hand over evidence of the laundering.
The Morolto’s don’t want him to do this for obvious reasons.
Because handing over priviledged information would get McDeere disbarred, he goes with the overbilling business. The Morolto’s could give a shit about McDeere so long as he doesn’t turn over any evidence implicating them.
Basically, what he tells them is as their attorney he cannot turn over any evidence implicating them. As the case against BL&L is now a fraud case and not money laundering, their business is still priviledged and can’t be used in court. He also hints that if he is killed, the evidence against them will no longer be privelidged and will be sent to the Feds. Essentially creating an insurance policy for himself.
As far as the Moralto’s are concerned, the business with the Feds is now a Bendini, Lambert & Locke problem. Their best bet is to lay low and hope the case doesn’t expand beyond overbilling.
Half-assed answer to question #1: I’m not sure. I read the book and saw the movie over 10 years ago, and they sucked, and at the time I was pretty sure they didn’t make much sense anyway.
Answer to question #2: No, the studio understood that the book was phenomenally popular to the point where any group of five or more people included one person who had a copy of the novel on their person. That studio knew that the best way to squeeze more money out of a public that had already embraced the book wholeheartedly was to cast pre-mass-public-hatred Tom Cruise in the lead. The movie was quite successful, if I recall correctly.
Bonus answer: I read three Grisham novels (The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client, all borrowed from kids in my high scool study hall when I was bored), and they all ended with some fancy lawyerin’, followed by the heroes/heroines beating the bad guys and moving to the Bahamas or some other tropical island.
The point isn’t that the firm is overcharging, it’s that they’re fully willing to kill whomever they need to to keep doing it. If I were in the crosshairs, I’d be “unhappy” too.
The film was good, but the soundtrack was better.
To add to what msmith537 said, the Feds were squeezing Tom Cruise to deliver the firm as a means of nailing the mob. Thus the madcap photocopying of documents. The mail fraud issue was the middle ground where he was technically abiding by his agreement with the feds to get the goods on the firm without violating attorney-client privilege between the firm and the mob. The photocopies became his insurance policy so that the mob would not kill him to keep him quiet.